CIS-People - NTT Research

Meet the CIS Team

Tatsuaki Okamoto

DIRECTOR

I received B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1976, 1978, and 1988, respectively. With NTT since 1978, I am an NTT Fellow and, presently, Director of NTT Research in the USA. Specifically, I focus on research in cryptography and information security.

In the past, I have served as President of the Japan Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (JSIAM), Director of International Association of Cryptology Research(IACR), and as Program Chair of many international conferences. I received the Best and Life-Time Achievement awards from the IEICE, the Distinguished Lecturer award from the IACR, the Purple-Ribbon award from Japanese government, the RSA Conference award and the Asahi prize.

OUr cryptography research team

Brent Waters

DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST

I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2004. From 2004-2005, I was a post-doctoral at Stanford University followed by work at SRI as a Computer Scientist. In 2008 I joined the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. Then in 2019 I was recruited to NTT Research as a Distinguished Scientist. My research interests are within the realm of cryptography computer security. My work focuses on Identity-Based Cryptography, Functional Encryption, and code obfuscation. Recipient of numerous awards and invited papers, I am noted as a founder of Functional Encryption and Attribute-Based Encryption.

Hoeteck Wee

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am a Senior Scientist at NTT Research, and a CNRS Senior Researcher at ENS, Paris. I received my PhD from UC Berkeley and my BSc from MIT. My research addresses new cryptographic challenges posed by Big Data and the Internet. My recent works focus on advanced encryption schemes that support fine-grained access control and selective computation; I am also a contributor to the TLS 1.3 standard.

Vipul Goyal

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am a senior scientist at NTT Research and an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at CMU. Previously, I was a researcher in the Cryptography and Complexity group at Microsoft Research, India. I received my PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles.

I am broadly interested in all areas of cryptography with a particular focus on the foundations of cryptography. Currently my research topics include secure multi-party computation, non-malleable cryptography, and foundations of blockchains. I am a recipient of several awards such as a JP Morgan faculty fellowship, a 2016 ACM CCS test of time award, a Microsoft Research graduate fellowship, and, a Google outstanding graduate student award. I was also named in the Forbes magazine 30 under 30 list of people changing science and healthcare in 2013.

Daniel Wichs

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am a Senior Scientist at NTT Research and an Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. I received my PhD in Computer Science from New York University, and my MS in Computer Science and BS in Mathematics from Stanford University.

My research covers all aspects of modern cryptography, including its theoretical foundations and its applications to information security. My recent research relates to the cryptographic challenges involved in outsourcing data and computation to the cloud; in particular, this includes the construction of homomorphic cryptosystems that allow the cloud to compute on digitally encrypted and signed data while maintaining its privacy and authenticity.

Mark Zhandry

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am a senior scientist in the CIS lab and an assistant professor at Princeton University. I study various aspects of theoretical cryptography, including constructions and applications of software obfuscation and the impact of quantum computing. In 2010, I graduated from UC Berkeley where I majored in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics, and minored in mathematics. I earned my PhD in computer science in 2015 from Stanford University. I earned my PhD in computer science in 2015 from Stanford University, before completing a postdoc at MIT.

Ilan Komargodski

SCIENTIST

I am a Scientist at NTT Research. I earned my PhD in Computer Science in 2017 from The Weizmann Institute of Science. Before joining NTT Research, I spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell Tech. My research focuses on foundational aspects of computer science with an emphasis on cryptography and its interplay with other fields. Most recently, I have been primarily working on designing new cryptographic protocols for secure cloud computation.

Pratish Datta

SCIENTIST

I received my MSc in Mathematics and PhD in Cryptography from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2012 and in 2017 respectively. Since 2017, before joining the CIS Laboratories of NTT Research, Inc. in 2019, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the NTT Secure Platform Laboratories in Japan under the supervision of Dr. Tatsuaki Okamoto. My mathematical background laid the foundation for my expertise over a wide range of hybrid strategies of provable security. Designing cryptographic algorithms offering advanced functionalities, featuring practical efficiency, and guaranteeing strong mathematical security at the same time is the central goal of my research endeavors. Specifically, I am interested in the design and analysis of functional encryption, attribute-based encryption, signatures, and pseudorandom functions.My findings have been broadly published within the proceedings of frontline international conferences like ASIACRYPT, PKC, ISC etc., and high-impact international journals like Theoretical Computer Science, Algorithmica etc.

Susumu Kiyoshima

SCIENTIST

I am a scientist at CIS Lab. My main research area is cryptography, and my primary interest lies in the design and analysis of cryptographic protocols. My previous works include designing cryptographic protocols that provide strong security guarantees (such as non-malleability, concurrent security, composability, and leakage resilience). I obtained my doctoral degree in Informatics from Kyoto University in 2018.

Justin Holmgren

SCIENTIST

I am a Scientist at NTT Research, studying the foundational theory of cryptography and its interplay with diverse areas of computer science. My work has notably advanced the feasibility of securely outsourcing computation, private information retrieval, and software watermarking. I earned my PhD (2018), MEng (2015), and SB degrees (2013) in Computer Science from MIT, as well as an SB degree (2013) in Mathematics. Before joining NTT Research, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and at the Simons Institute at UC Berkeley.

OUr blockchain research team

Shin’ichiro Matsuo

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am the head of blockchain research at NTT Research Inc. I am also a research professor at Georgetown University and work as a director and blockchain research lead of CyberSMART research center at Georgetown University. I’ve engaged in research on cryptography and cryptographic protocols over 23 years. In 2019, I was program chair of the Scaling Bitcoin workshop and, before that, program committee member of many blockchain related academic conferences like IEEE S&B, CBT, Stanford Blockchain Conference and Crypto Economics and Security Conference. I am also a co-founder of BSafe.network, which is the global and neutral academic research testbed dedicated to blockchain research. Further, as editor and project leader, I oversee two technical reports on the security of blockchain technology at ISO TC307.

Go Yamamoto

SENIOR SCIENTIST

I am a Senior Scientist at NTT Research. I hold a PhD and MS in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Tokyo, and a BS in Mathematics from the University of Tokyo.

I am presently focused on the digital transformation underway throughout society. Specifically, my research is driven by the idea of “trust” and the creation of dependable digital infrastructures that are accessible to all without barriers. I believe that if new technologies are to fuel our growth, we must first build foundations that are, above all, secure and reliable.

Towards that end, I work extensively in the fields of cryptographic mathematics, software engineering, cybersecurity, and distributed computing. I envision a world where the security of one’s data is considered the norm. In turn, I imagine this same security becoming the cornerstone of our shared technological future. My latest research focuses on the use of blockchain technologies to reimagine how we will work and live in the coming decades. I believe blockchain will be every bit as revolutionary to the world as the creation of the internet, in part because of the insights we uncover at NTT research.

Yuichiro Kamada

SCIENTIST

I am a Scientist at NTT Research and an Associate Professor at Haas School of Business of University of California, Berkeley. I received a Bachelor degree in Agriculture at University of Tokyo in 2007 and then a PhD in Economics at Harvard University in 2012. After spending a year at Cowles Foundation of Yale University as a Postdoctoral Associate, I came to UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in 2013. I was tenured and became an Associate Professor in 2019. I am a game theorist and do research on various areas: dynamic games, search theory, political economy, learning in games, strategic communication, social networks, market design, and marketing. I am an associate editor of Theoretical Economics, one of the top journals in economic theory. As a Scientist at NTT Research, I aim to apply my expertise on strategic interactions to the analysis on various aspects of blockchain.

(Photo: Jim Block)

Aron Laszka

SCIENTIST

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Houston. My research interests broadly revolve around the security and economics of blockchain ecosystems, the security and resilience of cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things, the economics of cybersecurity, and the application of artificial intelligence to cybersecurity. Previously, I was a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University from 2016 to 2017, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley from 2015 to 2016, and a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Vanderbilt University from 2014 to 2015. In 2014 I graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. In 2013, I was a Visiting Research Scholar at Pennsylvania State University.

Meet the CIS Team

Tatsuaki Okamoto​​

DIRECTOR

OUr cryptography research team

Brent Waters

DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST​

Hoeteck Wee

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Vipul Goyal

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Daniel Wichs

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Mark Zhandry

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Ilan Komargodski

SCIENTIST​

Pratish Datta

SCIENTIST

Susumu Kiyoshima

SCIENTIST

Justin Holmgren

SCIENTIST

OUr blockchain research team

Shin’ichiro Matsuo

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Go Yamamoto

SENIOR SCIENTIST

Yuichiro Kamada

SCIENTIST

Aron Laszka

SCIENTIST

Tatsuaki Okamoto

DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST

SCIENTIST